


The Once and Future Love

by BuddhistBabe



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Divorce, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Loss of Trust, M/M, Mind Palace, Podfic Welcome, Series 3 compliant, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers, Slow Build, parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 03:25:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3880423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuddhistBabe/pseuds/BuddhistBabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written from John's POV (like a blog post)</p><p>After discovering that Mary's baby is not his, John returns to Baker Street. Although the loss of the daughter he thought was his haunts him, he finds that he is happier with Sherlock than he had been in a very long time with Mary. They come to terms with their feelings for one another very early on, but don't act on them, because John is still not in a good place mentally, and his therapist warns against it. Despite that, they are draw towards one another, not being able to resist openly saying "I love you" once its been said already and making sweet observations about their feelings for one another without guilt.</p><p>Basically, a lot of melancholy fluff. </p><p>Dedicated to my very own Sherlock; Thank you for helping me through the toughest time of my life, and letting me fall in love with you at my own pace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Almost a year ago, I got married. He and I are already going through a divorce. The short version is, he was abusive. He had two children who I basically raised during the four years we were together.
> 
> This fic is kind of my way of working through those emotions.

I suppose I should start this entry by just coming out and saying that Mary and I are getting a divorce.  
It is both sad and joyous. I feel guilty being happy, but our short-lived marriage was complicated at best and miserable at its worst. I tried, for the sake of the child. I tried so damn hard. I understood her need for secrets, but I could never truly trust her. Every time someone would hear how long we’d been married and would say “Oh, still in the newlywed phase, then!” I would laugh and make excuses for our lack of a ‘newlywed phase.’

“Well, kind of hard to have a newlywed phase when you’ve got a baby on the way.”  
“Well, we were together for a time before we got married, you know.”  
“Well, we have our moments.”

Well, well, well.

Though I was miserable nearly constantly, I would tell myself that all marriages are difficult, and that I was strong enough to make this work. Every flippant remark about her past betrayals as though they meant nothing. Every time she would casually joke with Sherlock, as though she hadn’t literally wounded him. Every lie about her past that we both pretended was the truth. Through it all I forgave her. 

And then the baby wasn’t mine. And that was something I just couldn’t forgive.

I left, and ended up where I always do when my life is lacking, at Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson didn’t prattle niceties when she saw me on the doorstep with my overnight bag. She just said “Oh, John.” in the same voice I heard her use at Sherlock’s hospital bedside, and let me inside. The sounds of the violin stopped abruptly when I got to that step that makes the awful creaking noise, and I couldn’t suppress a sigh as I climbed the rest of the stairs up into our -Sherlock’s- sitting room. 

I don’t know what I expected, really. Maybe Sherlock facing out the window, bow held alight, ready to strike back down as soon as he was sure I wasn’t going to speak. Or perhaps him lounging on the sofa in his dressing gown, Sherlock’s version of ‘I told you so’ already forming on his tongue. Neither of those things were what I found.

When I came into the room, Sherlock was in the middle of it, stiff as a statue where he’d halted mid-stride. It was like he had rushed to come and open the door, but had frozen halfway there, unable to make it the rest of the way. It wasn’t his stillness, or his awkward position of an island in the middle of the room that threw me off. It was his face. His face was pale, even for him, his mouth slightly open in delicate shock. But his eyes, his eyes were what did me in. Wide, like a frighten child, and eyebrows crumpled and tight in confusion. He looked devastated.

“What could she have possibly done?” he gasped out, voice surprising normal for the expression he was wearing, “And how could she have done such a thing to you?”

I should say, I had been planning for a smug Sherlock. I had decided, if asked, that I was going to say “What? Can’t you deduce it?” in the most venomous voice I could muster. I had forgotten that Sherlock was my friend. I had forgotten that even when he had deduced Mary’s first betrayal, he had kept it from me in the hopes of not ruining my happiness. The second time, he had come to me with such sad resignation, because he had feared I would blame him in one way or another, or would do exactly as I had been planning to this time and take out my anger on him. I remembered that second time, the first time for me, really, when I had come to stay with him before finally resigning myself back to my marriage. He had brought out my old chair, and though the happiness at my return to Baker Street was rolling off of him in waves, he had kept quiet and not tried to dismiss my feelings.

This time around (Second? Third?) he stood before me looking as broken as I felt. I could tell he felt guilty. Ashamed. He felt angry and sad on my behalf. Whoever told Sherlock that he was a sociopath mustn't've meant much to him, because no one who has ever had a place in Sherlock’s heart could believe he felt nothing. 

I noticed I was shaking before I realized I was crying. Sherlock’s arms came around me and I hadn’t even seen him move those last few steps. 

“The baby isn’t mine.” The words came out sounding hollow, even through the tears, “She cheated on me before we were even married, Sherlock. Little Emma. She’s...someone elses. She had another man’s baby, and I’ve been raising her for four months.”

“I didn’t-I’m sorry-I should have been able to tell.” Sherlock gripped me tightly as he spoke, woeful and disjointed, “I’m sorry-I should have-It’s something I should have known-should have been able to tell you before you-”

“God, no, Sherlock. Please don’t.” I wrapped my arms around his waist, the nice fabric of that favorite maroon shirt bunching in my hands where I gripped it at his shoulderblades, “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s her. She’s-she’s really horrible, isn’t she? She did this. How could she do this to me?! She did this to me!”

I was bellowing into Sherlock’s throat by the end of my little speech, probably ruining his shirt with snot and the wrenching grip I had on it. Sherlock, of course, doesn’t have much experience in comforting others. If he were shamming, he would have led me over to the sofa and petted my hair, perhaps offering meaningless platitudes straight out of daytime telly. As it was, he did it much better job of it by staying right where he was, holding onto me nearly as tight as I clutched him, waiting until my tears finally subsided to awkwardly suggest tea.

“I didn’t even know you could make tea.” I said just this side of humor, when he handed me the cuppa. He hadn’t put my chair back up since the last time I’d come here, and that was where I sat, awkwardly perched on the edge as though relaxing back into it was somehow dishonest.

“I am a man of many hidden talents.” He replied, in the same nearly-joking voice I had used.

He didn’t ask me if I wanted to talk about it. He didn’t suggest pulling some kind of horrible act of retribution on Mary or anything like that. We sat in a silence tainted by my sorrow, and sipped our tea.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should say that this chapter features sudden and long winded love confessions. I’m usually the kind of person who gets to that part in a fic and stops reading, because they often come across as trite and/or forced. However, as I described in the summary, this is not a “I love you, let’s have sex” kind of situation, it’s a slow build, figuring out what we are kind of thing. I can also say from personal experience, that when you’re emotionally exhausted you don’t have the energy to dance around what you feel. It’s actually rather cathartic to simply let it all come spilling out whether or not the situation calls for it and consequences be damned.

I spent the night in my old room, which I was going to have to learn to start calling ‘my room’ again, without the past-tense addendum. The sheets of the old full bed were still there. I hadn’t seen much reason to take them with me since I was going to be sleeping in a queen with my wife from then on. Now, I was especially glad I’d left them behind. 

The bed felt ridiculously empty. I didn’t want to cuddle up next to Mary, ever again if possible, but the absence of another human presence in my bed shocked me to the core. It had been so long since I’d slept alone. A sinking feeling overcame me, a deep loneliness I had not felt since my battle with depression before I had met Sherlock years prior. It wasn’t the same as depression though, and perhaps I should not have been so clinical about my own feelings while adrift in them, but I could at least recognize that. I knew eventually I would not miss Mary even at night. I knew that though the thoughts of my child, my not-child as it turned out, would probably haunt me forever, at least it would one day feel less terrible than this. Depression has a taste to it that this did not have, a deep seated sense of worthlessness without hope for any kind of future. I had a future now. Maybe something of an aimless future, but a future nonetheless. A future without someone who had sought me for the Slavic assassin (Or Russian maybe? Was she American? Canadian? Who knows.) equivalent of a visa. 

There was, of course, Sherlock. A future with Sherlock should have felt like being trapped, I suppose. Should have felt like I was returning to this life because I didn’t have any other choices. Instead, it felt freeing. I managed to sleep that night picturing the two of us running through the streets of London, and if we were holding hands in the little scene I played in my mind, there was no one there to judge me.

The next morning I woke with tears already streaming down my face. I sobbed into my pillow as quietly as I could, not wanting to bring the attention of my housemates to my sudden hysterical outpouring. I couldn’t remember the dream I’d had, but I knew that whatever it was hadn’t been nearly so sad as what it had inspired. I let myself cry. I can talk a big manly game, sure, but I also know that there is a time and place for tears, and alone in your own bed the day after leaving your adulterous wife was one of them. I realized at some point in my sobbing, that I wasn’t crying over Mary at all, but Emma.

“My baby.” I gasped into the pillow, feeling the tears well fresh, “My baby.”

Pain gripped my heart like someone had physically reached into my chest and grabbed it. I kept recalling the sensation of her little fist wrapping around my finger. The soft down of her hair. I replayed a memory of rocking her to sleep over and over. The stunning sensation of her eyes finally closing and knowing it was my exhausted mumbling of the same song my mother had sang me that had done it. 

It really is true all those things that they say, that being a parent changes your perspective on the world. I stopped having patience for people without children, stopped prioritizing myself and my own emotions. Emma’s safety, health, and happiness took over everything. And now I was no longer a parent. No one would call me Da, that precious syllable, perhaps ever again. I’m still not sure if I’d heard her say it or if it had simply been wishful thinking that a four month old could do anything other than gurgle. 

I heard the sound of clinking tea cups and the murmuring voices of Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock down stairs, and knew it was time to get myself together enough to be seen. The thing that finally made the tears subside, however, wasn’t the knowledge that Sherlock would see my cry (he had done last night) but instead the sudden influx of logistical reasoning into my brain. Tea cups. Who got the tea cups in the divorce? My work clothes. I’d packed enough for a week, but no more. My bike. I’d taken a taxi to Baker Street, so most likely it was still sitting in our -Mary’s- entryway. Would she destroy my things? Most likely not, since it was not I who had wronged her. Did I need a lawyer? Maybe I could do it myself. What was the process of filing for divorce, anyhow? Was it possible to divorce a person who had an assumed identity? Had our marriage even been valid in the first place? Would I end up having to pay alimony and child support? 

I sat up in bed, rubbing at my overgrown stubble and flicking sleep from my eyes. The nagging heartache was still there, but better. I’d read somewhere that tears are actual a form of the brain self-medicating an overwhelming chemical influx to the brain. Tears flush the excesses that cause grief and pain, and also contain some naturally produced painkillers. It’s why we cry sometimes even when we’re very angry or very happy. My tears couldn’t heal the pain of Mary’s duplicity, but they did numb it like oxycodone to the heartstrings. 

I dressed like I was putting on armor, head to toe, before I stepped out of my room. Yes, it was just slacks and a button-up with a jumper over it, but I felt less exposed than I would have in my pajamas. It occurred to me that I might feel silly if Sherlock was still sleep-mussed and in his dressing gown when I came into the sitting room, but he wasn’t. He wore jeans and t-shirt, one of those super soft slouchy numbers you get in a boutique, but it was still startlingly casual for a man who spent a good part of his life in pressed black trousers regardless of the occasion. 

Sherlock was sitting at what we had often called our ‘breakfast table’ which was infact a card table that could be pulled out and used for case outlines, dual laptop desks, or obviously, the large breakfast tray Mrs. Hudson had brought up. He was picking at a lumpy but delicious looking croissant in a way that was more reminiscent of dissection that a meal, but some of the bits and pieces made it to his mouth between sips of milky tea, so I suppressed the instinct to comment in favor of letting some calories actually make their way into Sherlock’s body.

“I must warn you-” Sherlock began, in that authoritarian voice he is so very fond of.

“Good morning, John dear.” Mrs Hudson said in a near whisper, no doubt wanting to get the greeting in before Sherlock started in, but feeling a bit guilty for interrupting him all the same.

“-we are likely to get a visit from my brother.” Sherlock picked up the paper and held it out towards me, effectively drawing me close enough to the breakfast table to be shoved into a chair by Mrs Hudson and served.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hudson. You didn’t have to do all this.” the croissants were delicious, and I’d forgotten the magic of an elderly british woman making tea, “Can’t we just tell him ‘no’? I’m going to have to make the rounds breaking the news to everyone anyhow, I’d rather do it on my own terms, thank you very much.”

“Isn’t there…This isn’t just a row?” Mrs. Hudson hesitated, and the flaky pastry in my mouth suddenly felt like solid rocks impossible to swallow.

“No. It’s over.” I stared down at my plate, waiting for tears to suppress, but none came. All I felt was relief, weighed down by the loss of Emma, but relief all the same.

When I looked up, Sherlock was studying me. Those eerie blue-green eyes watching my face, probably deducing my mood or my intentions from my five o’clock shadow and the part in my hair. I had forgotten how very Sherlock he could be. How alive I could feel being under his scrutiny. Living apart from him it was easy to forget the effect he had on me. No, not easy. Not unless it's easy to hack off a piece of yourself and sew someone else there in their place and pretend it works just as well that way. No, not easy to forget, but the intensity of my response to him was fresh having gone so long without it. 

“I know it would be easy to blame Mary,” I heard myself tell him, “But I’m sorry I drifted away from you these past couple of years.” 

The shock on Sherlock’s face was squashed by a self depreciating glare almost as soon as it had risen.

“I was the one who left first, John.” he said sternly, “I should have been there to take care of you. I should have rescued from this ill advised marriage before it began.”

“Sherlock, none of that was your fault. I clung to Mary when you were gone, and-”

The click of the door to the stairs landing signaled Mrs. Hudson’s hasty retreat, and I tried not to be embarrassed that our conversation had become so personal so quickly that she had felt the need to leave. I was numb enough that morning that I just about succeeded. 

“There’s nothing for it, Sherlock.” I said with a heavy sigh, “To be honest, I’m just grateful to be here. With you.”

I reached across the table and tentatively placed my hand over his. I should have been terrified, or at least had some kind of reasonable sense of hesitation, but there was nothing of the kind. It was as if my mind was so overcome by sorrow already, I couldn’t imagine adding pain would make a difference.

“I need to tell you something.” 

“What is it?” Sherlock’s gaze did a quick up-down between my eyes, to where I held his hand on the table, back to my eyes again.

“I want you to know that I’m not asking you for anything. Or making any promises either. I-” I swallowed thickly but carried on, “It’ll probably be a while until I’m...whole enough again...I just, I’ve wasted so much time already, it seems a waste to keep any secrets at all.

“I love you, Sherlock. I’m in love with you. Have been, since the beginning probably. I wish now I’d told you sooner. Wish I’d dropped Mary and everything else when you came back and told you how I felt. Instead, I squashed it down and pretended it didn’t exist. I told myself it was irresponsible to dwell on those kind of feelings when I was building this family -this life- with the wife and the kids and the house. 

“I don’t want to make it sound like I was pining over you the whole time I was married to Mary. It was the opposite, in fact. I made you an impossibility. I didn’t just supress you, I lobbed you off. Like a lobotomy.”

“You deleted me.” Sherlock said softly, almost with wonder, his gaze going back down to where my hand was atop his. 

“Yes. Yes, exactly.” I drew back, pressing my hands together in balled up fists and leaning my elbows on the table. I looked away. 

“I’m not sure what to say, John, except...that I feel the same.” Sherlock coughed lightly and when I swung my gaze around he expertly avoided my eyes.

“Which part?” 

“All of it. The...feelings. The lobotomy. All of it.”

I blinked. Shouldn’t I be happy? Shouldn’t I be dancing at the very idea Sherlock loved me back? It felt empty, telling him now. Too little, too late. Whatever fantasies I had once had about joyous confessions were dashed and it was as if I couldn’t care less. 

“I too, am not...asking for anything.” Sherlock fiddled with his tea cup, turning it by the handle where it rested in its saucer, “I’m not promising anything either. It has been less than 24 hours since you left your wife and I decided long ago that romance was not an undertaking I am suited to.

“However,” he continued, meeting my eyes once more, “I want nothing more than to gather you up in my arms and kiss you and tell you that everything is going to be alright.”

I gaped at him. It was too straightforward. Too sudden. Too wonderful. The picture it created in my mind was almost bizarre. I fought with myself over whether to fling myself into his arms or decline politely. In the end, my own apathy and sorrow won over.

“Well, like you said, barely 24 hours...I don’t think...”

“Yes, precisely.”

We sat in silence for several moments, staring into one another’s eyes. He smiled shyly at me, and I returned it tentatively. Ah, there was the happiness; a curious churning of grief and elation in my gut. I took my phone out and glanced at the time, just for something to do. 

“I have to go to work.” I realized mournfully.

“Ugh, no. Why? Stay here with me.” Sherlock was wearing a massive grin even as he formed his words to sound dismissive and petulant.

“I wish.” I said without hesitation, “But I doubt my finances will bear the strain of a divorce as it is, let alone if I don’t maintain my income.”

Both of our moods went gloomy at the d-word, but our smiles did not die entirely.

“Have a good day.” he said softly as I rose from the table, “Text me?”

I hated it as much as I loved it. The question in his voice, the strange lilt of tenderness there. That wasn’t Sherlock. That wasn’t us. Even as I delighted in it, I resented it. 

“Absolutely.”

\--

I shouldn’t have worried. The atmosphere of a quiet breakfast and emotional revelations may have seemed out of character for us both, but once I arrived at the clinic both doubt and joy were pushed aside in the face of allergy season. I could almost hear Sherlock scoff in my head every time a patient said “I’ve had this cold for more than two weeks, and now I’m afraid its pneumonia!” As a general rule, prescription allergy medication is just as effective as over the counter, but I dosed them out in due course, wondering why signing my name on a prescription pad suddenly felt heartbreaking.

The Watson Family. We were going to order Christmas cards this year; a trendy collage of wedding and baby photos. Yes, of course, that’s what it was.

My bleak drudgery was interrupted by a text alert and I eagerly checked my phone between patients.

A dead body shone up at me and I locked the phone, looking around the empty examination room as if the met were about to rush in and confiscate it. I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed heavily. Sherlock. I turned the screen back on and looked at the text a bit more warily this time. There was a note attached which said simply ‘Exhaungination.’ Curiosity replaced my moral outrage in the blink of an eye, and I reexamined the photo attachment. 

It was a bit of an aerial shot. Sherlock had obviously stood right above the body and taken the picture so that the entirety of the blood pool beneath it was visible. The body, a man in his late 30s by the looks of it, was lying on a concrete floor with his throat slashed open. I read the text again: “Exhaugination. -SH”

‘That’s not a lot of blood for an exhaugination.-JW’ and then realizing belatedly that I hadn’t addressed the bigger issue here, ‘Sending texts of dead bodies, Sherlock? A bit not good. -JW’

A flurry of texts came in quick succession, beginning with three from Lestrade. 

‘You sure?’  
‘Forensics seems to think there’s plenty, though they’re suggesting tests of some kind. And the man was obviously esanginated.’  
‘*Exsanguinated’

I was struck with the image of Sherlock holding his phone under Greg’s nose and saying triumphantly “See?! John thinks so too!”

‘Believe me, when a body completely bleeds out, there’s a bigger puddle than that. Seen it in action. -JW’

‘Alright. I’ll get Molly to take a better look once we get it back to the morgue.’ came the reply.  
While I’d been exchanging texts with Lestrade, Sherlock had barraged my phone with five or six of his own. I smirked, bracing myself for retaliation about the reprimand and possibly a backhanded compliment for having the good sense to agree with him.

‘Thank you, darling. -SH’

I blinked.

‘And exactly how was I meant to show you the size of the blood pool if I’m at the crime scene and you insist on being at that ridiculous job of yours? -SH’

That was a bit more like himself, but there was more.

‘Do you not like “darling”? -SH’  
‘If it helps, the word darling is derived from the germanic and literally translated means “favorite minion” -SH’  
‘Are pet names not on? -SH’  
‘This is really not my area, John. -SH’  
‘You have to tell me if I’m doing it wrong. -SH’

I pressed my hand over my mouth as though I needed to shield my phone from the wide grin blooming there. While I looked down at my phone in shocked delight at Sherlock’s frankly adorable little panic attack, another text came through.

‘Forget I said anything. -SH’

This spurred me to action, and I quickly tapped out a reply before I had to head back out into the world of inflammation and bogies.

‘No, it’s fine. You can call me pookie for all I care. -JW’  
‘I actually quite like the idea of being your favorite minion. -JW’

I felt myself blush. Actually, physically flush in the peaks of my cheeks like I was 14 years old, twirling the long cord of the wall-mounted phone around my finger as I awkwardly gushed at the first girl I fancied. ‘Darling’ I could almost hear his low, smooth voice say the word. The idea brought up a giggle before I could suppress it, tucking my phone back into my coat pocket. I joyfully alerted the nurse that I was ready for more patients, hoping that this feeling would carry me through the day in the way that thinking of Mary and Emma had not. 

The haze of happiness followed me through my next few patients until I could check my phone again. Melancholy was an ever present force I could not properly rid myself of, but my eagerness to see Sherlock’s reply outweighed all other emotions in my mind. As soon as I was able, I commandeered an exam room and took out my phone.

‘That’s disgusting, John. People don’t really call each other that, do they? -SH’  
‘I have never had a minion more dear to my heart. -SH’

My heart fluttered. I was already forming a reply in my mind, but there were more texts to get through first.

‘Secondary knife wound through the femoral on the left leg, and another on the right clearly intended for it, but missed the mark. Possibly killer thought victim was dead, only to discover their mistake at the secondary dump site. -SH’  
‘You ought to be here. This is no fun without you. -SH’  
‘DONOVAN IS A CUNT -SH’  
‘She was attempting to read my text conversation over my shoulder, so I thought colorful language was in order. -SH’  
‘Miss you. -SH’

I clutched the exam table as I bodily suppressed the laughter I knew would be loud enough for the whole clinic to hear if I let loose. Guilt sideswiped my glee, but I threw it aside at the thought that this was Mary’s fault, not mine. Finding happiness after leaving was what wronged husbands were meant to do, damn it. 

‘I miss you too, pookie. -JW’


End file.
